Chapter 36: Sea Of Light
You Zhicheng trembled as he turned the telescope in another direction.
That was the only road connecting Sen Mountain Base to the outside world.
He saw what appeared to be a “long snake” on that road, which made him pause involuntarily.
Looking more closely, he realized it wasn’t a long snake at all, but clearly large trucks uniformly painted in dark green!
One after another, covered with tarps but obviously extremely heavy, the large trucks extended fully several kilometers in length, snaking along the winding mountain road toward their base like a long serpent.
“Comrade.”
A voice suddenly appeared.
You Zhicheng lowered the telescope and saw a man also wearing a dark green uniform who had somehow come to his side.
“Hello, I am the group leader of the Sen Mountain Base construction team. This is your appointment document.”
The stranger handed a document to You Zhicheng. Opening it, he saw clearly written that he had been appointed as the deputy group leader of the Sen Mountain Base construction team.
“Director You has worked at Sen Mountain Base for several years and is very familiar with everything here. We hope that in the coming time, we can work together to complete this mission within the stipulated time.”
“Oh, good, good, certainly, certainly.”
Dispatch and organization meetings were held accordingly, with various related tasks quickly broken down and assigned one by one.
Three hours later, You Zhicheng lifted his head wearily from the pile of documents.
According to the new schedule, it was now his designated rest time.
The suddenly intense work pace had also overburdened his brain.
But he still decided to go to the surface to check the current mission progress before resting.
“It’s already dark, and even if the mission is urgent, without outdoor lighting conditions, work can’t continue, right?”
A bit more worry arose in his heart: “If we can’t work at night, progress will be delayed.”
Walking out of the gate of the base surface building, abundant lighting immediately entered his eyes, making him momentarily dazed.
“What time is it? It’s not dark yet?”
The next moment, his eyes adjusted to the external light. Looking again, he realized it wasn’t that it wasn’t dark at all, but clearly lights!
Endless and continuous, almost converging into a sea of light, illuminating the base area and surrounding several kilometers as bright as day!
But Sen Mountain Base clearly didn’t have that many lighting lamps installed! Not to mention outside the base area, even within the original area there were only a dozen or so, barely enough for nighttime lighting.
In just a few hours, install lighting lamps across the entire base and surrounding area totaling several square kilometers?
Impossible!
Looking more closely, he realized it wasn’t installed lamps at all, but clearly one drone after another.
A thick cable extended directly from the ground, probably several kilometers long.
On this cable, every dozens of meters there was an outlet, from which a thinner cable extended, directly connecting to drones hovering dozens of meters in the air.
Powered directly by these cables, the drones could hover in the sky for extended periods, while also lighting up the high-brightness lamps installed on them.
A single cable connected to at least 50 or more drones, which meant 50 high-brightness lighting lamps.
And at this moment, centered on Sen Mountain Base, within the surrounding more than ten square kilometers, there were far more than a hundred such cables extending out!
They crisscrossed, forming a large net that nearly covered the entire gorge, collectively powering at least tens of thousands of helicopters and lighting lamps in the sky. Thus, the entire gorge was fully illuminated, truly forming a sea of light.
But this was not the entirety of the lighting project.
You Zhicheng clearly saw that beside this sea of light, there was another river of light extending endlessly into the distance, with no end in sight.
It was the road connecting Sen Mountain Base and Sen Mountain.
Through those lights, he vaguely saw that the road was still occupied by continuous large vehicles.
Those endless vehicles flowed like rolling “river water,” surging ceaselessly along this river of light into the sea of light where he was.
Just watching them filled You Zhicheng with a shiver from the depths of his soul.
In addition to the large trucks that had already arrived during the day, there were also some coaches arriving at the base.
One of them was parked not far from You Zhicheng.
Dozens of people got off it and, under the guard’s command, merged into the nearby tent forest and disappeared, while the coach immediately drove away, freeing up the parking space.
The next coach arrived.
This time, the passengers who got off didn’t go toward the tents but instead walked toward him.
Taking a look, he was surprised to find that he actually knew most of them. Even those he didn’t know seemed familiar, clearly colleagues.
“Old Zhang? Old Li? Dacheng? How did you all come?”
These people were all experimental physicists, very skilled at handling large scientific research equipment.
Some among them even held dual roles as experimental physicists and engineers, each a leading figure domestically.
“Old You, we’re all here to support you. No need for more words, quickly take us to see the current progress.”
“Only ten days, this is really, really…”
The group hurriedly entered the underground base. Outside the surface building, continuous coaches and large trucks were still arriving endlessly.
Carload after carload of engineers, scientists, senior technicians, logistics support personnel, supplies, and more flooded in like a torrent, seemingly without end.
“Perhaps we really can get the telescope into operation within ten days.”
Such a thought surfaced in You Zhicheng’s mind, but it was soon replaced by another.
“Power supply, manpower, and logistics can rely on this human wave tactic, but what about equipment and pure water?”
……
More than a thousand kilometers away, the vast wilderness, Qinghu Lake Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory.
Director Cheng Dong looked at the interferometer arms extending at right angles from the base, up to ten kilometers long and about two meters in diameter, at the more than one hundred thousand drones hovering over the entire observatory with lighting lamps, and at the at least hundreds of thousands of workers busy working through the night under the lights, remaining silent for a long time.
“Ten days, can we really get it into operation?”
……
